Day 22 - Final day in India

Checked out of the Ginger with all our luggage following behind in its own people carrier - it trailed us round Delhi for the rest of the day. We had been going to attend a pottery demo at the Habitat Centre, by one of the visiting potters from the Terracotta exhibition, but instead we had the morning at the Crafts Museum - highly recommended by Kevin and the 2 Nigels who'd been previously. It has outside exhibits, like vernacular village buildings, carts etc



Strange looking pottery - must be the genie in the jar - textiles, furniture, sculptures and carvings are inside the museum area, and there is further outside area where craftsmen are demonstrating and selling.

Here the lady is singing the painting to Nigel - you had to have been there!
The whole museum was magical - I could have sketched a whole week away in there, but we were booked in to go to a friend of Pollie's for a late lunch. Anuradah was instrumental in the 2 year planning and execution of the Terracotta camp at Sanskriti and last night's Terracotta exhibition. As well as all that to contend with, her daughter had just got married, with all the planning and catering that entails, and now she had offered to do a cookery demo and lunch for 13. She lives in one of Delhi's leafy suburbs, in a very nice house furnished with lots of pots and paintings.





The demo was fascinating, lunch was delicious, but at 5 we had to take our leave for the airport - a convoy of taxis, luggage, memories, and images, we drove through the less salubrious areas of Delhi - the holiday all but over.




" This is indeed India! the land of dreams and romance, of fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty, of splendor and rags, of palaces and hovels, of famine and pestilence, of genii and giants and Aladdin lamps, of tigers and elephants, the cobra and the jungle, the country of a hundred nations and a hundred tongues, of a thousand religions and two million gods, cradle of the human race, birthplace of human speech, mother of history, grandmother of legend, great-grandmother of tradition, whose yesterdays bear date with the mouldering antiquities of the rest of the nations -the one sole country under the sun that is endowed with an imperishable interest for alien prince and alien peasant, for lettered and ignorant, wise and fool, rich and poor, bond and free, the one land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for the shows of all the rest of the globe combined. "
Mark Twain
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I can't begin to thank Pollie and Garry for the amount of work that has gone into organising this trip. Their enthusiasm for India has, I think, rubbed off on us all - and I am eternally grateful for the chance to experience the past 3 weeks, and to have spent it in such good company. Thank you all. xxx